Web Design Toolbox: 130+ New Tools to Make You a Better and Faster Designer Last year we did a post on 50+ tools for Web design. A lot has changed in the past year, and there are tons of new tools available to designers. Whether you're just starting out and need a drag-and-drop builder or you've been coding for years and need tools to help you be more efficient, there's something on this list for you. Here are over 130 tools to make you a better and faster designer. Feel free to add more in the comments. Beginner Resources YAML Builder - Easy to use YAML (Yet Another Multicolumn Layout) XHTML/CSS site layout builder. Sky CSS Tool - JavaScript CSS authoring app. The Box Office - CSS formatting tool for wrapping text around images. CSSTXT - Online CSS text style generator. izzyMenu.com - Free CSS menu builder. pForm - HTML form builder. Roxer - Drag and drop website creator. Wirenode - Create your own mobile websites. dotemplate - Template site that allows you to customize templates before downloading them. templatr - Online tool for creating website templates. SeeYouThen!
Web Design for Developers 12 Useful Web Tools for Designers When it comes to design, there’s a plethora of free web-based tools to help you accomplish tasks such as color palette selection, creating unique fonts, editing images, and testing typography. In this article, you’ll find a bunch of handy online utilities for designers. kuler Create kuler is a web-based application by Adobe that helps you create and share color themes. pixlr pixlr is a web-based image editor with a Photoshop-like user interface; pixlr has similar features like layers, filters, and even a Clone Stamp tool. Wellstyled Color Scheme Generator Wellstyled’s Color Scheme Generator is a simple web tool that helps designers produce color themes. FontStruct FontStruct is a web-based tool created by font retailer FontShop for creating, editing, and sharing fonts. Typetester Typetester allows you to test, tweak, and compare screen typography. TypeNavigator TypeNavigator is a very clever web tool that can help designers identify typefaces. Dummy Text Generator BGPatterns Dabbleboard PicMarkr
Preparations For a Web Design Project There are several stages during the process of a web design project, and every stage is important to achieve a positive end result. In order to proceed to the research phase, you need to gather information and know what the project is about, which technology is required, the target audience, goals, content, etc. There are great articles out there explaining theory aspects of a web design process, stages, and how you should proceed. Those articles (which I recommend reading) can give you a good understanding of this matter and they are usually very theoretical, which is not the purpose of this article. Do you ever felt curious about how other designers build their web sites? How do they organize things while working? Every professional designer or developer work in different ways, however, the goal is to give you good insights about how you can prepare and deal with some practical aspects of a web design project. The points that you will read about are: Folder Structure Inspiration Advantages
12 Portable Apps for Web Designers A web designer must always have his or her tools handy. Of course, that is most often the case when you’re working from home or from an office where you have your own work computer. But if you are constantly on the move or are doing a lot of demonstrations to your customers at their place of business, you’ll need to carry your programs with you. Scenarios That Benefit the Use of Portable Apps Most designers just carry their laptop with them. In addition, there are those unfortunate times when your computer crashes and breaks with all the data on it and no ways to retrieve it. In those cases, a good backup (or even primary) solution is to carry your own toolset on a portable flash/USB drive. The Feasibility of Using Portable Apps There are a lot of great applications for web designers that will work without needing any installation, and they make an excellent choice for a portable USB drive. Here are some of the best portable apps for web designers that are a must-have. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. 8. 9.
DIY Website Options: What You Need To Know » The ClickStarter You need a website to take your business online, but I’m guessing that you aren’t a computer science PhD or programmer. Because of that, technology choices for a website isn’t something that you would know about. This guide should help you figure that out. This is the definitive guide to making a decision on your website’s publishing platform. We will cover self-hosted DIY websites as well as hosted (outsourced or 3rd party) website builders. What Are Your Goals and Budget? The first step is to go back and review your goals and budget. Looking at the graph above, you can see that there is a point of diminishing returns for DIY websites. So if you’re intending on building blog or website, this guide is for you. Options for Building A DIY Website There are 3 main options for creating a website on your own. Self-hosted HTML website A website like this is created on your computer with software like Dreamweaver. You will definitely need to know a bit of HTML to get the results you want. P.S.
Optimizing your Website Speed, Tools and Tips Having a decent website has never been more affordable than now. With ready-made design templates, free website builders offered with hosting; there are just too many choices. Customers today have choices and getting & maintaining their attention is also harder than ever. Many individuals and businesses now rely completely on their website to bring visitors and make money. Importance of Website Optimization Website Optimization is something often neglected by website owners as well as new web design & development professionals. Creating a beautiful and usable site creates a good impression, but its speed that will ultimately help your customer to make a sale or read the information you want them to read quicker. Once you understand how website optimization is done you could began incorporating few things in during the design / development phase saving time later on. Different components of a website 1. 2. 3. Some of the components of a website on which optimization can be done are: 1. 2.
10 Free Website Thumbnail Generation Services Automatically created website thumbnails have a wide usage from links in a website to a web application presenting URLs with their thumbnails. Using a website thumbnail generation service is generally a time-saving decision both for the website owner (as it'll be automated) & the visitor (for getting a better idea about the link). Here are 10 free website thumbnail solutions including a "how to on creating your own". Considering you'll probably use one of these services in the future, make sure you bookmark the post. ShrinkTheWeb A powerful & free thumbnail service with 250,000 request limits / month & offers more limits in the paid plans. For the free plan, no custom sizes can be mentioned & inner page thumbnails are not supported (but supports most of the popular sizes). websnapr websnapr offers free website thumbnails & puts a "powered by websnapr" phrase over the images. There are ready to use plugins for WordPress, Drupal & more that can be found here. thumbalizr iWEBTOOL Thumbnails
12 Extremely Useful And Powerful Free CSS Tools Don't Forget to participate in a contest where you can win an amazing e-Commerce template from TemplateMonster. There are many CSS tools available on the internet that help us writing better and valid CSS code. Such tools are of great importance for the web developers and web designers because achieving good command over CSS is a must to achieve skill for them. Many designers and developers constantly look for fresh and useful CSS tools to add them to their toolbox. Therefore, keeping this in mind we thought to compile a collection of 12 useful CSS tools for the web developers and web designers. With these tools, designers and developers can learn new ways of using CSS3 properties and in this way can increase their work efficiency. CSS3Gen – Generate Useful Snippets of CSS3 CSS3Gen is a CSS3 Generator that allows you to generate CSS3 snippets for Box Shadow, Text Shadow and Border Radius. Stylie – A Graphical CSS Animation Tool Stylie is a fun tool for easily creating CSS 3 animations.